Sony has crafted an alternative to digital right management (DRM), but retailers like GameStop may be in for a rude awakening if the Japanese company decides to implement its recently patented technology into the next-generation Playstation. The patent details the use of two separate codes, a disc ID and a player ID, which must check out with the product's terms of use for the game to be playable.
The full patent abstract reads, "A game playing system includes a use permission tag provided for use in a game disk for a user of a game, a disk drive, and a reproduction device for reproducing the game. The disk drive reads out a disk ID from the game disk. When the game is to be played, the reproduction device conveys the disk ID and a player ID to the permission tag. The use permission tag stores the terms of use of the game and determines whether a combination of the disk ID and the player ID conveyed from the reproduction device fulfills the terms of use or not."
The patent was originally posted on the NeoGAF forums (via IGN) and was submitted in early December. Notably, a network connection is not required for the technology to work, thereby removing one of the key stumbling blocks of modern DRM.
Sony is expected to unveil the Playstation 4 at E3 2013, and the company remains tight-lipped about its next-generation technology. It is unclear if the DRM replacement will make its way into the console, but more details will surely leak as we edge closer to the event.